ROGERS — I have a love/hate relationship with crafts. I usually stay away from the craft fairs because they sometimes give me ideas, but Sunday was such a pretty day that I found myself at War Eagle Mill.

That’s how I caught the bug.

I used to make a lot of crafts and I enjoyed it, but then I got a full-time job.

There just isn’t enough time to work, take care of a house, raise children and do crafts.

Something had to give. I tried giving up the housework, but that didn’t really work.

I haven’t completely given up my crafts, but that’s just me being optimistic. I take something out once or twice each winter when I remember that if I can keep busy after dinner, I’ll be less likelyto snack. I bought the big needlepoint kit a few years back. I think I had seen a movie where a pretty actress sat down with a large embroidery hoop while her family gathered around and admired her skill. Of course it didn’t work that way for me.

The first time I sat down with the big needlepoint kit, I didn’t realize I was supposed to separate all that embroidery floss. I ended up using way too many “strands” and the little cross stitches endedup as large bunches. When I realized my mistake, I opted not to pull out all those giant stitches. I figured I had plenty of time to go back and fix it later. Instead, I turned it around and started at a different corner. That was where I misread the pattern and put in a long series of the wrong stitch. After that the needlepoint kit went back into the closet and I took up knitting.

The problem is that there are a few artists in my family and somehow I caught the desire without inheriting the talent. When my kids were very young and I wasn’t working full time, I found the perfect solution: sweatshirt painting.

You start out with a stencil which you transfer onto thefabric and then you fill in the spaces with fabric paint.

It isn’t exactly like paint by numbers because you get to choose your own colors, but you can find a color picture in the stencil book and copy the colors if you want.

I loved sweatshirt painting. Using that little brush and all those bottles of colored paint made me feel like a real artist and using the stencils made it easy. It reached the point where every time one of the kids took off a sweatshirt, I grabbed it and painted something onto it. It was easier with the girls than with the boy. He didn’t like it when I painted flowers onto his sweatshirts and flowers were my best stencils.

I did a few embroidery projects back then, too.

My best work was a set of Christmas stockings that took me five years to complete. One of the highlights of my Christmas season is when I get the stockings back out, hang them behind our wood stove and admire my work. Everyone in the family knows those stockings are for decoration only.

No one is allowed to put something like a chocolate Santa Claus into a stocking that took five years to make.

Then there were the scrapbooking projects. I like to say I did scrapbooks before the word became a verb, but it is a little embarrassing that my scrapbooks haven’t been touched for over a decade. Maybe it’s better if I don’t claim them at all.

I still have the knitting.

The scarf I’ve been making my son has taken almost as long as the Christmas stockings. I’m sure he’ll love it.

Someday.

I came home from War Eagle with lots of neat ideas and headed down to the basement to find my fabric paints. Luckily, the teenaged daughter had been into my craft boxes and most of the paints are no longer useable. I closed up the box and put it away. It was a relief when I realized I really don’t have to do any more crafts.

Reporter Lynn Atkins can be contacted by e-mail at lynna@nwanews.com.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/21/2009

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